Julian's Educational Evaluation

     Julian had a teacher from the public school system come out today.  All they did today was evaluate his fine motor skills.  He had a good attention span today (yeh for minor victories!) and he did the shape puzzle without a hitch.  He 'colored', but didn't do the lines and circles that she wanted him to.  I've been working with him on this for a couple months, and I haven't been able to get him to do it either.  He did surprise me with the middle activity.  She had a few small (very small) wooden squares with a whole in the middle that she wanted him to put onto the string, and move them all the way down to the knot at the bottom.  HE DID IT! and then wanted more squares to put on there, so she gave him the bigger squares with wholes to put on.  He scored just below 'average', so she labeled him 'borderline' as far as fine motor skills are concerned. 
      The speech Therapist came out Friday.  This was.....difficult.  By this point, Julian was sick and tired of being off routine and tired of being questioned, in my opinion.  She was okay, but not very understanding.  Julian had to be bribed just to come in the room with her.  I did what I always say, and I used food.  I let him pick whatever he wanted out of the fridge to answer some questions.  He picked yogurt lol.  That's my healthy kid! So, he came in the living room and sat down at the table and answered three of four pages in the book of 'where is the cat.  Point to the dog.  Where are the shoes." Then she asked him where all his body parts are, and I told her most of them, you'll have to say the actual scientific names, because that's how he knows them, so she did and he answered them all.  Then she had him play with the blocks and did some test there, and he did fine.  Then it was back to her picture book for a little more complicated questions.  She didn't realize that I knew exactly what kind of test she was running, and some of her answers to Ryan on this irritated me a bit.  They were questions about a few pages of 'big' pictures, with something going on in them and he was supposed to point out parts of it, such as the picture of the car and the dog chasing it and and question was 'where is the door of the car? Where is the tail on the dog?' By this point he was done.  He wasn't even paying attention, he was still playing with the blocks.  She asked me if I thought he knew this stuff, and I said of course, we do this all the time in his Highlights High Five magazine.  She said, no, I'm looking for something specific.  I said, I know how you have to word this section.  I work with him at least three times a week with this very thing.  He knows it.  Her position was, he didn't do it and wasn't interested, so she had to mark him there.  She didn't tell me a 'score' for this section, but instead said that after Monday's appointment with the psychologist, they will compile a report and make an appointment to come out and go over it.  Then it was talking about his school.  
     They said, again, that Mineral city was full, so he'd HAVE to go to Starlite.  I said, 'Mam, I hate to sound bitchy, I don't know another word for it, I'm sorry, but he doesn't HAVE to go anywhere.  Miner city isn't even an option, our four year old goes to that one, and they are awesome but we've called and they DO NOT have special education teachers with experience with Autistic children.  His doctor wants him in Dover South.' She was, needless to say, irritated with me, but showed so minimally.  She said we'd discuss it further at the report meeting.  So, that was Friday's appointment.
     The psychologist came out yesterday (Monday) and that meeting went pretty well.  He was a nice older man, so Julian actually took to him better, I think because he wasn't so over bearing.  Instead of 'testing' Julian, he played games and actually TALKED to him.  Most of this appointment was the Dr. talking to us, and Julian playing with his cars in the room.  The Doctor also watched him interact with his sister, and asked a lot about how he interacts with his older siblings.  He wants to see how he interacts with Dylan especially, next time he comes out.  He said, his goal is to get the entire team together, write up Julian's whole report, and come back out before Thanksgiving, so that we can start with a teacher coming out to the home (until we work out Dover South), and Julian can start getting used to them.  Julian was having a 'good day', so it went smoothly all the way around.

     Also next week, Julian has that pre-muscle biopsy that I've been talking about in Columbus at Nationwide Children's Hospital.  We'll meet the doctor that will be preforming the biopsy and talking about what will happen and what we are looking for at the biopsy.  It's three hours from our house, BUT they will take him, they are just for pediatrics, AND that's where his pediatrician did her residency and that was her next choice for him.  I will write about this appointment in a seperate blog, to make it a bit easier.